a. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to parallel processing computers and specifically to processing on clusters of computers.
b. Description of the Background
Parallel processing on multiple computers has been a challenging and complex task that has always required a high degree of custom software. In many cases, software must be created for a specific physical configuration of computers or processors.
Many types of parallel computing are known in the art. Shared memory computing has several processors that have memory that is directly accessible by all of the processors. Such computers have the ability to synchronously execute the same or similar instructions on an array of data.
Parallel computing may be performed by separate computers that are connected over a network, sometimes known as cluster computers. The computers may communicate by passing messages between the computers. In such message passing parallel computing, the individual programs that are operating on the various computers must be synchronized at least in part so that the messages may be transmitted, acknowledged, and replied.
Other types of multi-processor computing systems are known in the art. However, each of the systems requires that the software is tailored to the specific system. For example, if a program were written for a shared memory computer, the same program would have to be rewritten to operate on a message passing computer system. In some cases, a program for a cluster computer of ten nodes may have to be changed in order to operate on a cluster computer of one thousand nodes.
It would be advantageous to provide a computing platform wherein the advantages of shared memory systems and message passing systems are both realized. It would be further advantageous if the system were automatically scalable to different computing architectures and thus programs could be developed and tested in a small computing environment prior to running on a large scale cluster computer or the like.